


Last Resort

by 28ghosts



Series: drift space nine [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Episode: s02e13 Armageddon Game, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 13:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: To escape a Tellerun attack, Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir have no choice but to pilot a Jaeger together. Bashir is the last person Miles would want to link minds with, but what he finds in the Drift is far from what he'd expected.





	Last Resort

**Author's Note:**

> a billion thanks to @eusuchia for betaing; their suggestions were incisive and extraordinarily useful
> 
> this takes place in the same 'verse as [Defiant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299530) but is standalone

Of all the people to be on the run with from a group of hostile aliens with, of course Miles is stuck with Julian Bashir.

And he's being outpaced by him, no less. Miles nearly slips rounding a corner only to see Bashir, wide-eyed, crouched there waiting for him. "Don't wait up for me," he snaps. "Someone's got to warn the T'Lani--"

"It's a dead end," says the doctor. He jerks his head towards the end of the hall, where there's a whole host of locks and panels in a language neither of them reads. "But, if I'm not mistaken, they do have a Jaeger."

Miles slumps against the bulkhead, chest heaving. How the hell do the T'Lani have a Jaeger? That's Federation technology; it shouldn't be this far out in the quadrant. Still, a dead end with a Jaeger is better than a dead end without one. Miles looks from Bashir to the interface that must attach to the Jaeger. "Cover me," he says.

Bashir nods and creeps closer to the corner, stolen phaser held tight in one hand. Miles will grant the man one thing: he's keeping his cool. If his aim's not bad, maybe they stand a chance.

Assuming they're Drift compatible, that is. Miles has no reason imaginable to believe they should be. But Miles knows from experience that the mindset of an emergency can get non-innately-compatible partners far enough. If they can just get off the ship and into the damned thing, manage to broadcast a warning at the very least...

The language may be strange, but the technology isn't. It's a standard emergency access hatch that might as well have been ripped off the walls of Deep Space Nine, and as he works, Miles starts to figure that well may be close to what happened. It is Federation tech, albeit with a layer of T'Lani over it. As he slides panels off, splices wires together, more and more of it seems familiar. It's got to be an older Jaeger, either salvaged from a dead ship or taken by force some decades ago.

Just when Miles manages to jerry-rig the security circuits into playing nice for him, there's the sound of bootfalls and the electric whine of phaser fire. Always makes the hair on his arms stand on end, it does. "Er, status, Chief?" Bashir asks; then comes the stronger charge in the air that must be Bashir firing back.

The two pilot slots recessed in the wall start to open up. Miles drums his fingers against the access panel, heart pounding in his chest. He tells himself it's the usual sort of damned nervousness he gets when he's cornered and out of options, that it can't have anything to do with that splash of Harvester gel.

She's got to be an old Jaeger indeed; the pilot slots should be opening faster -- stars, have the T'Lani modified the pilot suits? Will they even work with his and Bashir's biologies? Miles swallows what's too much spit pooling in his mouth. Instead of looking over his damned shoulder to check, he asks, "How close are they?"

He hears Bashir fire off a few shots. "Bit close," says the doctor. He sounds nervous now, as he ought to. 

Miles thinks. It's got to be a defense Jaeger that the T'Lani have, and so it stands to reason that the inurement containers will have panic buttons, designed so that pilots can suit up even when under fire. But it's hard to know. "Hold them off another minute if you can," says Miles. "These access hatches aren't opening quickly, but I'll try to suit up."

"Can't wait," Bashir says. He might be trying to sound flippant; mostly he sounds nervous.

Miles crouches. The pilot slot he's closest to has only opened up to waist-height, and he can’t see much. Grimly he presses one arm into the dark of the closer slot. No surprises, so he ducks his shoulders and braves onwards.

There's a whole lot of things that could go wrong in the next minute, yes. But even an ancient Jaeger gives them better odds than a two-man firefight against the Tellerun, especially since he and Bashir have only the one phaser between them.

He stands, and in the dark, a suit drapes around him. At least there's no obvious modifications. He lets his mouth hang limp so the species-agnostic laryngeal mask airway can worm its way down his throat, coated with an analgesic so that his body doesn't panic.

Miles has Drifted before, but not in a long time. The thick and lukewarm wet of inurement gel is unsettling. He wishes he'd thought to ask Bashir if he'd Drifted before, though no answer would have made him feel better. Distantly, as if from a dream, he is aware of a physical slamming, reverberations of shock, that must come from Bashir finally dashing for the opposite pilot slot.

The Jaeger has already started entraining to Miles, so desperately he sends out a try at a mental panic button command -- no need, apparently. His physical awareness has started to spread out through the Jaeger, and he's as aware of the automatic slamming-down of the walls as he is of any part of his body.

It closes, thank every mercy, faster than it opened.

A mechanical chime rings through Miles's consciousness, and Julian Bashir comes into the Drift.

-

There's no transition-state, no juxtaposition of strange memories. It is with the urgency of purpose that they Drift. Three-bodies to one-body. Damn it all, it's an easier Drift than Miles has ever experienced.

Miles-Julian-Jaeger becomes they.

They are admittedly a bit surprised by how well they work together, and how quickly they do. They are too well-trained to linger on it. They call up diagnostics and agree that the situation is dire.

The Jaeger is not well-maintained. The ship they are escaping is training weapons on them. They hold their breath as the Jaeger's control systems come online. When the ship fires, they feel no relief when the Jaeger spins out of the way. No relief as the ship doesn't trail them. There's nowhere they could be headed aside from T'Lani III, after all, and their enemy knows T'Lani III well. Perhaps it is a trap they are hurtling towards, but what other option do they have?

(Miles feels himself hauled along with the military discipline of an emergency Drift. Maybe he's a bit indignant that it's his Drift partner more focused on the task, him more floundering at the strangeness of Drift, of other-sense. But it doesn't matter since he's not him -- he's the Drift. They focus.)

The Jaeger must be fifty, sixty years old. Its internal combustion mechanism is not only outdated but failing. There is no thought in how they streamline the Jaeger and tilt towards the surface of T'Lani III. The Jaeger is outdated, but for now it works. They enter orbit. Soon they will crash, and if the inurement gel has worked as it ought, their bodies will be uninjured by the impact, they will extract themselves, and then they will get on with surviving. The Jaeger is outdated, but they are not. They work together (for now.)

For the last minutes of atmospheric entry, there is nothing to focus on. The Jaeger heats as it draws closer to the planet. Miles finds himself flickering away from that Drift-sense of unity. The inurement gel braces his body against the worst of the turbulence, but the Jaeger's systems shriek with warnings: shields failing, hull temperature rising, power being re-routed to dampeners. He thinks, briefly, of Keiko and of Molly. From Bashir's presence in the Drift, he gets a passage in Kardasi that because of the Drift he understands -- it still means nothing to him. 

Is Bashir thinking of...Garak?

The Jaeger crashes. The Drift ends.

-

Miles does what he can as the Harvesters chew their way through him, but he can't get it done fast enough. The same Jaeger circuit patterns that came to mind so quickly not hours ago now seem like a foreign language when he tries to call them up into memory.

They're forced to abandon their attempt at sending a broadcast via the Jaeger, and so into one of the deserted villages of T'Lani III it is. Miles's whole body feels strange. They're surrounded by buildings left behind by the millions of people killed by the same thing that's killing him. At least Bashir manages to scout out a building that has a respectable communications array setup, though it's in dramatic disrepair.

Clumps of dried inurement gel drop off of Miles as his mind starts to fail him. The stuff that protected him in the vacuum of space from a Jaeger's zero-grav quick twists and turns, accelerations and decelerations -- it scabs in his joints and in his clothes and then it flakes away.

Bashir takes over on the transmitter repairs. Blanket clutched around his shoulders, Miles watches the doctor. The inurement gel falls off Bashir too, but the younger man ignores it. He prattles on and on and on about the stupidest imaginable things.

Miles hates how much of a relief it is, Bashir's voice. Unbothered, confident, blithe. For a while, it makes him think everything will work out. It makes him think he'll see Keiko again. It makes him think he'll see his daughter again.

In some point of silence, where Bashir has managed to focus enough to fall quiet, Miles, of course, has to ruin it. "You Drifted before?" he manages to say.

For a moment, he thinks Bashir hasn't heard him. But then he sees the doctor straighten up from the circuit board he's been laboring over, and he sees Bashir roll his shoulders. "No," Bashir says. Miles is too far sick by the Harvesters to interpret the tone of his voice. "You have, I assume."

How is it that Julian Bashir is the sort of person to bring nothing into the Drift?

"A few times," Miles manages to say. It's hard to breathe. Sweat is starting to run over the places on his skin where dried gel has crusted, and he itches all over. He's too far gone to scratch at himself, though. "Not..."

"I didn't pick anything up from you, if you were worried," Bashir says mildly. He doesn't look back at Miles; he just scratches at the back of his neck. Little bits of gel cast off into the air. "Doctor-patient privilege and all."

It takes Miles a long few minutes to remember Dr. Crusher elaborating to a whole small crowd of them, at Ten Forward, what it meant to be a doctor and to Drift. That the medical ethics she’d sworn herself to applied even moreso in the Drift. That most doctors refused to Drift unless absolutely necessary.

By the time he's remembered that wouldn't prevent Bashir from picking up on anything freely offered in the Drift by a Drift partner, his tongue doesn't quite work the way he wants it to. And Bashir seems focused anyways. Miles lets himself fade.

He knows well what the Harvesters do to a body. No use trying to fight it for much longer.

Somehow, Bashir manages to save them both. (Of course he bloody does.)

-

Back on the station, Julian submits his report first before bounding off to go write another report on the biological nature of the Harvesters. Bizarrely, it's a task which he seems genuinely enthused to complete. The man is like an overeager hunting dog except scenting solely after publication credits and annoying Miles.

Even though debriefings are a pain, Miles could not be more relieved to finally be several rooms apart from the man after an entire week of research on the T'Lani ship and then the ordeal of Drifting and trying to repair a receiver. And though he’s back on his feet, he’s still not entirely recovered from what the Harvesters did to him. Sisko sees it in his expression when Miles wanders in and grins, shaking his head. "We're glad you're back, Chief," he says. 'We' means himself and Major Kira, who looks about as exhausted as Miles feels. "Please, sit down."

Miles lets himself relax into the chair across from Sisko's desk. It's clearly not a formal debriefing, and Bashir has most likely provided Sisko with all the details the commander could have asked for and quite possibly some he wouldn't have. Miles hands off the PADD with his written report to Kira and rattles off a loose summary of events to Sisko, who mm-hmms in acknowledgement in the right places.

"This isn't the first time you've had to Drift with an untested partner if I remember things correctly," Sisko says, once Miles is done talking.

"Yes, sir. It went as well as it could've."

"Thanks in part, I'm sure, to your experience in similar emergency Drift situations."

"What did Dr. Bashir mention about it?"

"Just that it happened quickly and next thing he knew, he was trying to get gel out of his hair," Sisko says.

Miles sighs. Of course the one time the man bragging about himself could save Miles some work, he's got to act humble about it. "Bashir brings as close to nothing into the Drift as I've ever seen," Miles says. "No first-memory or panic or anything like that. You've seen the logs we brought back; two people don't sync that fast just because it's an emergency."

"I figured something like that had to be the case." Sisko steeples his fingers under his chin. "It seemed more likely than you and Dr. Bashir being particularly Drift compatible."

"And he'd never done it before." Damned annoying he has to be good at that too is the underlying complaint that Miles is too tired to conceal, but at least the commander looks amused. "And you saw the age of that thing, so it's not as if she had the latest neural easements."

Starfleet had transported the wreckage of the Jaeger back up to the station after Miles and Bashir had been rescued. She turned out to be a nearly seventy-year-old defense craft named Last Resort, and she'd been attached to a Federation freighter before vanishing in the middle of a routine shipping route. Engineering was poring over her logs, trying to decipher who'd used her when, what might have happened to the freighter between her disappearance and the T'Lani's acquisition of her Jaeger.

"Of course the one person I can't order to Drift is also the one to bring nothing into it," Sisko says. "Good work, Chief. Keep me updated on how the T'Lani might have gotten their hands on that Jaeger; I want to know if we can expect any other forces we might encounter to have something similar up their sleeves."

"Yessir."

Kira pipes up from where she's slumped against the doorframe, PADD in one hand. "I still don't understand why just being a doctor means Julian can't be ordered to Drift."

"Take me up on trying out the Defiant and you'll understand why, Major," says Sisko.

"Starfleet-wide regulation," Miles adds. "Might violate doctor-patient confidentiality for a doctor to have someone up in their head like that. Medical is the only branch of Starfleet that isn't required to be trained how to do it, actually."

"The closest thing I can compare it to is an Orb experience, just...with another person, rather than an Orb of the Prophets," Sisko says.

She turns to Miles. "You're telling me you did this with Julian and didn't go crazy?"

Miles chuckles, even as Sisko glares in half-warning. "He really does take doctor-patient confidentiality seriously, I guess." And then, since it made it into his report, after all, he grants, "The only thing I got from him at all was a bit of Kardasi."

"Garak's influence, I assume," says Kira. Her nose wrinkles. "There's someone else I wouldn't want to Drift with."

"I have trouble imagining circumstances where that would be necessary, Major," says Sisko.

"Don't test fate, Commander," Miles says, which gets him a grin.

-

Keiko thinks it's hilarious that he and Bashir ended up Drifting, and that Bashir brought nothing in to boot. Or nothing in besides a brief and entirely unwanted hint of Garak.

"What was the line of Kardasi again? I'm looking it up."

Keiko has been convinced for several months that Garak and Bashir are having a torrid affair. That or she's pretending to believe it expressly to annoy him, which all things considered might be more likely. "I don't know," he groans. "Something about fate and the state or something."

"Oh, good. That narrows it down to...any piece of Cardassian literature in the databanks."

"Good; that's about all I want to know about it."

Keiko likes Garak mostly because, Miles thinks, the man is shamelessly flattering whenever Keiko wanders in for a fitting, and possibly also due to the discounted rates he sells children's clothing at.

And she also thinks Bashir is, quote, cute in a hapless way.

It's enough to make a man doubt his wife's taste, which is unsettling to think about. So he doesn’t think about it.

-

It was on the Rutledge that Miles had ended up Drifting most, at least until he'd scrambled up the ranks enough to be considered Command in all but name. On DS9, at least on the good days, it was strange to remember he'd once been good enough in a Jaeger to be first ordered in, then ended up good enough to be held back. He knew what Jaegers were capable of better than anyone else on the Rutledge, and when it came time to strategize, Maxwell had always wanted him on hand.

He'd had enough of Drifting before Setlik. And after it, even when he'd been asked to, he'd managed to beg off. Didn't want someone else shouldering those memories in all their vivid detail. Didn't want himself reliving them, more selfishly. It had been a relief on the Enterprise to, for the most part, oversee nothing more involved than maintenance and first-time Jaeger syncs.

Though he'd also handled things when the worst happened and they lost a Jaeger and her pilots. It didn't happen often, but he'd overseen the installation of new Jaegers more than than he wanted to remember.

Counselor Troi had always been there supervising new pairs of pilots on their first launches. After all, it wasn't always the case that two people who tested as Drift compatible using a virtual interface actually ended up compatible in a Jaeger, for whatever reasons. It was usually someone's sudden realization they were more scared of dying in space than they'd thought that threw a spanner in things. The nastier sort of Drift-failure came from unexpected interpersonal sorts of stuff. Someone concealing disdain or envy or attraction or hatred.

That was why Troi was always there while the pilots synced up. If Troi sensed something off, Miles would end the session immediately. Far better to try and mend things between pilots outside of the Drift, after all.

It was that sort of failure that he'd assumed would get him and Bashir killed by the Kellerun. In the back of his head, he'd assumed that Bashir would be over-eager, and his own resulting irritation or disdain would bleed through the Drift, and Bashir would be offended, and they'd desync, and they'd end up out of control and blown into pieces.

It was a touchy thing, Drifting with someone for the first time. Even more so in a combat situation. Miles’s first years on the Rutledge had forced him to do so four times, due to his usual Drift partner being required somewhere else, and it had always been dodgy. So he empathized with the pilots who looked disoriented and disappointed when Miles yanked them out of the Drift at Troi's signal. But it had only taken the one occasion of a Drift going terribly wrong for Miles to remain grateful his whole time on the Enterprise that Troi was there to smooth things over when necessary. Nothing worse than maybe dying in the vacuum of space with your brain hooked up to someone who suddenly hated you.

He hadn't really ever been close with the Enterprise staff, partially due to being a non-com, partially due to the sheer size of the ship. He spent most of his time with engineers and maintenance, and that extended to his leisure time. But he'd spent time enough time with Troi to have had a few more serious conversations with her -- about Drifting, mostly, but about other things, too. The challenges of having a family while in Starfleet, things like that.

Once, after a pair of new pilots had synced and unmoored, Jaeger drifting into orbit around the Enterprise, Troi had said something wistful about how it seemed like a special thing, Drifting.

"I don't know about that," he'd said.

"Really? You're sharing your consciousness, after all."

Miles had shrugged. "A bit, sure. But not just for the hell of it. Hardly something I'd want to do with Keiko."

Troi laughed at that and didn't press the point. It would be years later, when Miles recalled the conversation to Keiko off-handedly, that he'd realize Troi probably did understand better than Miles figured. It must have been strange to be a half-Betazoid raised amongst Betazoids, where no thought was private. Seemed wretched, truth be told.

-

Through the next few station days, that weird bit of Kardasi starts to get under Miles's skin. Did Bashir really not have anyone else to think fondly of, minutes before possibly dying, than Garak? It keeps him up a few nights, trying to think of who Bashir seems to really be friends with.

It's annoying. The last think Miles wants is to be concerned about Bashir. The man probably has lots of friends who Miles doesn't know about precisely because Miles and Bashir aren't friends, so why would he know? And besides, he's not responsible for Bashir. If the man has no one close to him, maybe there's a good reason for it.

So when he wanders into Garak's shop on a day he knows damned well that Julian's booked for a surgery, he isn't sure why.

"Chief O'Brien! What an unexpected pleasure," Garak says. The Cardassian is waiting in the entry of his shop, hands folded behind his back, as if he'd been expecting Miles. "What can I do for you today? Don't tell me Molly's grown another size already." It's said with the cheerful confidence of a man quite convinced that his discounts on children's clothing have assured him another man's wife's good graces.

The gist of what Miles had perhaps vaguely intended to say had been _Look, Garak, I don't like Julian, and I don't like you, but I like Julian better than you, so watch yourself_. Actually finding himself face-to-face with the Cardassian without anyone else there, though, makes him reconsider his approach.

"I'm here for a new jacket," is his new tack.

Garak's brow-ridges rise in polite attention. "Is that so?" He might look annoyed.

Good.

"Yes," Miles says.

"Delightful. I'm quite pleased. I assume your wife has finally had enough of this uniform?" Garak tuts as he closes in with his measuring instruments, which in the half-light favored by Cardassians look a bit more ominous than Miles is happy with.

Miles harrumphs. "Don't know why else I'd be here," he says.

"Well, I had heard from Dr. Bashir that your last mission entailed some rather, hmm, intimate drastic measures. You never know."

Miles rolls his eyes even as he straightens his shoulders for Garak's measurements. He and Bashir Drifted; they didn't get dosed with aphrodisiac pollen and stuffed in a closet together. "I suppose you could say that." Even to his own ear, he sounds grudging.

"I approve of your utilitarian attitude towards Drifting, Chief O'Brien. The way some residents of this station talk about it is unsettling to say the least."

Sisko describing Drifting to Kira as being like an Orb experience comes immediately to mind, and despite himself, Miles finds himself amused. "You're not wrong."

Garak is thorough and professional in his measuring, more like a doctor than anything else. He hums to himself here and there like he's talking to someone. He snaps one of his tools closed when he's done and looks pleased with himself. "Very well, then. What can I interest you in today?"

"I dunno. Something Keiko won't hate."

Garak heaves a sigh, rolling his eyes as he heads towards one of his racks. "Your species has altogether uninspiring taste, I'm afraid. Which came first, the drabness of human sensibilities or that wretched uniform?"

"It's not that bad."

"At least I've talked Dr. Bashir into seeing a bit of sense," Garak says, searching through fabrics. Miles frowns to himself and considers it. He doesn't see Bashir off-duty much if he can manage it, but now that he thinks about it, the doctor has been dressing a bit differently whenever Miles catches a glimpse of him at Quark's. Just last week there'd been that shirt that Dax had commented on... What had she called it? A scoop neck?

Garak is still talking, as if to himself. "If you're lucky, Chief, perhaps some of that will have arrived to you in the Drift. Rather than the inverse, of course -- it would be awfully inconvenient to have to convince Dr. Bashir all over again."

Something about Garak's constant circumspect references to Miles having Drifted with Bashir is starting to seem...odd. Garak brings over a few samples of fabric, talking loftily about silhouette and complexion and other things that Miles couldn't care less about. But for whatever reason, Miles nods solemnly in the right places and asks extremely stupid questions that Garak answers with more tact than he ought to.

They've agreed on a fabric when it hits Miles, and he feels like a right idiot. Garak, spy. Julian, his friend. (Or something.) Miles, recently all up in Julian's head (as far as Garak knows, apparently.) And Miles, who usually wouldn't be caught dead in Garak's company, showing up out of the blue to buy something.

Is Garak concerned that Miles learned something he shouldn't have? Or that Julian figured something out privately, and Miles picked up on it in the Drift? It would be incredibly satisfying to have Garak on the back foot if Garak feeling threatened wasn't also a situation that seemed likely to end in blackmail at best, several murders at worst. So as it is, it's more than a little nerve-racking.

Miles agrees to a certain pattern at random. Garak thanks him for his purchase and asks if he'd like to see the shipment of silks he's just had delivered. Why not, Miles thinks to himself wearily.

It should be less surprising that a former spy has mastered the art of the upsell.

"Drifting is..." Miles starts to say.

Garak pauses, a bolt of something shimmery and floral draped artfully over his arm. He's staring at Miles like a predator that's finally spotted an animal with a limp among the herd.

Miles waves a hand in the air uselessly. "It's not that special if you're well-trained at it. Not like when I Drift I'm rucking about in people's heads."

"What a waste," Garak says, chin tilted up. His inner eyelids flick across his eyes once, twice.

"Not really. The point of Drifting is to pilot a damn Jaeger, not...gathering blackmail material. Kind of goes against the whole purpose of Drifting, trying to do that."

"Sounds like something a man with blackmail material would say," Garak says mildly.

At which Miles rolls his eyes because really. "The only thing I got from Julian was some line from a book or something. I'd like to see how I could blackmail Julian with that."

Garak affects indignation. "Chief, I would never imply you intended to blackmail Dr. Bashir."

"Sure," says Miles. "You were worried I'd blackmail you."

Now at ease, Garak goes back to shifting through his silks. "Yes, the thought did occur to me."

"I just want to make it very clear I can't do that," Miles says.

"I understand."

"No blackmail possibilities here."

"Of course."

"Really. All I got was some sort of...poetry. That's it. We had a Jaeger to focus on, you know."

Garak hmms to himself. "You should really consider a matching set of trousers to go with that jacket."

At which point Miles figures he's probably made his please-don't-murder-me-and-my-family case strongly enough, but tipping off Odo might not be uncalled for.

"After all, it will hardly go with your uniform, and that just won't do."

"I'm not here to spend all my credits on clothes, Garak," Miles says wearily.

They argue half-heartedly for a few minutes about a discount, and at some point Miles gets tired of it all and says yes, dammit, fine.

Garak must insist on taking measurements by hand as some sort of strange intimidation tactic. Miles has scanners that can measure a ship's loading bay within a millimeter in about a second; surely other, more normal tailors are having their clients step into scanners.

"So, Chief, what sort of poetry was Dr. Bashir calling to mind during your...adventure together?" Garak is standing behind Miles, much more closely than necessary.

"I haven't the slightest."

Garak hmms in a way that conveys polite but extreme disbelief.

"Look, it was in Kardasi, I think, and if you think I'm either a fan of poetry or of--" He cuts himself off, thinking better of insulting Garak's planet to his face. Or not so much to his face, more with Garak standing directly behind him and with no witnesses.

"I see," Garak says. "Chief O'Brien, I doubt you speak Kardasi, so I'll take it for granted you have some unknown but convincing reason to believe it poetry."

How is this even more excruciating than filling out all the paperwork Starfleet had wanted? Miles groans and decides absolutely nothing is worth enduring Garak's company for much longer. "I don't know that it was poetry; it just seemed poetic. And I don't speak Kardasi, but that doesn't really matter in the Drift, alright? Julian knew how it translated, so I knew, too."

"Hmm," says Garak. He circles around to stand in front of Miles, evaluating. "Is that so?"

"I don't think he had the translation quite crystal clear," Miles says. It’s hard to explain that it wasn’t a translation that Bashir had been thinking of. He’d been thinking of the original text, but since he’d known the translation, Miles had known it too. More or less. No use trying to get that subtlety across to someone who has no idea what the Drift is like, though. "Something like...if the day I forget you is the day I die, er, something like that."

Garak genuinely lights up, which Miles doesn't like at all. "Intriguing," he says. "Something like..." He makes the gesture that pauses the UT and rattles off something in Kardasi that, dammit, is exactly what was echoing through Julian's head as the Last Resort started burning up in T'Lani III's atmosphere. He gestures again: the UT kicking back in.

"Yes," Miles says.

Garak nods approvingly. "Perhaps an inelegant translation, but he can hardly be blamed. _The Rocks We Strike Rocks Against _has, after all, been banned on Cardassia for nearly a hundred years, and I'm afraid the few translations available are into languages other than..." Garak's Standard is good, damned good, good enough that Miles sometimes forgets Garak isn't using the UT full-time. But for a moment Garak lets the Kardasi accent come through full force, and with disdain, he says, "Federaji."__

____

____

"Ah," says Miles.

"A more accurate translation of the passage in question might be something similar to, hmm, how would you say it..." Garak crouches, one of his strange measuring tools in one hand. "'If the first day I think not of you is the first day after my death, then, beloved, I have been shown mercy.'"

Miles frowns even as Garak starts probing at his waist. "I'm pretty sure the state was mentioned in Julian's head," he says.

"Ah, yes," says Garak, tilting his head. "The next passage lists who the narrator believes will have been merciful, in this hypothetical situation."

"Right," Miles says. He'd like for this conversation to not be happening at all, but if it's got to happen, it would be nice if Garak was at, say, eye-level, rather than on his knees and very intent on accurately measuring the width of Miles's hips. "Er, this book... You've read it, then?"

"Why, Chief, of course not. It has been banned."

"You just quoted directly from it."

Garak shrugs. "If one doesn't know what's banned, how will one avoid it?"

The logic there seems off, but Miles is disinclined to challenge him on it.

"Regardless, I didn't realize Dr. Bashir had been exploring Cardassian literature at his own direction! What a marvelous surprise. Even if it is..." Garak pauses, inhaling sharply, rocking back on his knees. He says, primly, "A banned work."

Garak does sound pleased. Maybe too pleased. Is there a level of pleased Garak would be capable of sounding that Miles wouldn't find unsettling? Most likely not.

"Well, you didn't hear as much from me, you hear?" Miles says. He tries to put some menace in it, but Garak is currently measuring his inseam, and it's a bit hard to seem stern. "Er, it's a bit...frowned on, talking about something you saw in the Drift."

Which he's just done. For some reason.

Damn, Garak is good.

"If you say so." Garak is unoffended; he is done with his measurements and stands, suddenly tapping away at a PADD. "On an unrelated point, Chief O'Brien, would you care to view some more of the Andorian silk I've just had delivered?"

This is what he bloody gets for trying to be subtle with a spy-turned-tailor. Miles doesn't know what he'd expected. But Keiko does enjoy her fabrics...

Somehow Garak still manages to sell him trousers and a shirt on top of the commission for a dress for Keiko (a sweater for Molly tucked in between purchases as Miles had signed for it all.)

But he also gives Miles a very generous friends and family discount, so whatever. Miles knows it isn't worth thinking too hard about. Garak's just tricky like that. The 40-percent-off-label price has probably been perfectly designed in some odd attempt to circumvent station security codes. Or something.

-

He updates Keiko on the whole literature thing; of course he does. She pulls up everything in the databanks and quotes reviews with vicious delight: "The only genuinely romantic Cardassian work, says Bajoran critic Pela Anys," she quotes from her PADD as he's making dinner. "Banned, obviously. What a shame; it seems oddly touching."

"Well, if you're that interested, you can start a book club with Julian."

"Don't tempt me," she says. "I just might. We'll start with Cardassian romances, then work on some Klingon ones."

"Maybe you can write to Worf, get some recommendations."

"He did always seem like the romantic type," Keiko mock-muses to herself, and Miles shakes his head. The mental image of Bashir, Keiko, and Worf having a book club meeting comes to mind far too easily.

-

A few days later, Miles is crossing the upper level of the Promenade when he sees Sisko and Dax watching something down below with keen interest. Against his better judgement, he joins them. The fact that there's always something interesting happening at Quark's isn't so much a good thing, but even Miles can appreciate a bird's eye view of a good bar fight every now and then.

Nothing, unfortunately, so interesting. At one of the back tables, Bashir and Garak are nearly at each other's throats. It's too loud for Miles to hear them from the upper level, but based on the distance other patrons are keeping from them, they're probably not far off from screaming at each other.

"Impressive," says Dax. "I didn't know Julian had it in him. I'm proud."

Miles has the distinct feeling that he is missing something, and he has the indistinct feeling that he would like to continue missing it, whatever it is. Anything that has to do with Bashir and Garak's weirdly argumentative friendship gets filed under the same mental folder as certain salacious rumors he'd heard on the Enterprise about certain members of the senior staff.

"I...take it no one need notify the Constable or anything like that," Miles says, to fill the silence.

"I think Odo knows well enough by now not to interrupt a Cardassian having such a...passionate argument," Dax says.

Sisko actually laughs at that.

Bashir leans over the table towards Garak. He's tall and long-limbed enough that he's basically in Garak's face, and for a moment Miles thinks Julian is about to grab the man by the collar and--

Oh no.

He must've said that out loud because Dax claps him on the shoulder sympathetically. "It could be worse, Miles. Imagine if Julian hadn't kept everything to himself in the Drift..."

"I need a drink. Or five," says Miles.

Which is the wrong thing to say because Dax brightens and says, "I'll buy a round!"

"Absolutely not," says Sisko.

"I do not want to be any closer to...that, whatever it is," says Miles.

Dax's nose wrinkles in displeasure. "You're no fun, either of you."

Miles takes the opportunity to excuse himself. Firmly.

He's going to go split a bottle of wine with Keiko and then do some reading about how to manage the Drift better. If he ever, Prophets forbid, has to Drift with Julian again, there are some things he really, really doesn't want to know.


End file.
